If that headline doesn’t get this post onto the first page of Google for the next 10 years, nothing will!
In all seriousness though, I had quite forgotten that the end of 2009 marks the end of the first decade of this third millenium of our Gregorian calendar. One would naturally think that that should be next year, but 2010 is the first year of the “Tens” (or is that “Teens”… and will the 20’s roar again? ) I digress.
In light of this and as it’s the start of December, with the new year (and decade) on the horizon, there are lists everywhere. Pitchfork have the top albums/songs/artists of the decade. Empire magazine have the top movies. The Irish Times have the top everything (books, albums, movies, plays, recipes, blogs, style of socks, etc) and this is only the start. I’m sure we won’t be able to pick up a bumper issue of the RTÉ Guide without finding a top 10 list of something.
My problem is I can’t remember what was great last week, let alone at the start of 2000. For New Years eve of the new millenium, I was sitting on the roof of a friend of mine’s house in Århus, Denmark, watching the fireworks, drinking champagne. We celebrated the New Year again an hour later to compensate for the time difference between where we were and where we came from. Everything else between then and now has been a bit of a blur so in no particular order, here’s MY top 10 list of all I can remember of the past 10 years! (For added benefit, I’m going to leave out everything to do with the internet, web design and development)
- Sigur Ros – without their music, nothing would be the same
- J.R.R. Tolkein and Peter Jackson – they said it couldn’t be done
- iPod – being able to carry all that music in your pocket is so much better. No music, no life.
- Digital photography – it’s so easy now. Millions of pictures on a hard drive, none of them ever looked at again!
- Digital media – not technically the internet, but being able to acquire high quality movies and music without leaving the house and without having shelves and shelves of plastic cases, is a godsend
- Travel – still not free, but so much cheaper than it was
- Mobile phones – popular since 1996 but really came into their own in this decade. I mean, who REALLY makes arrangements to meet outside Trinity tomorrow at 3pm anymore?
- The Grand Slam – 61 years but we won it again (only winning the Rugby World Cup in 2011 would top 2009 as a rugby year!)
- Marriage – it happened and it’s great
- Peace on Earth – there’s 29 days left!!! It could happen!!!
(I didn’t realise how difficult it would be to make this list without mentioning jQuery, Google, PHP, Wordpress, Facebook, Wikipedia, MooTools, broadband, Apple Macs, MySpace, blogs, browsers, Joomla, eBay, external harddrives, memory capacity and speeds, chipsets, Intel, grid design, Photoshop, CSS, large monitors, ASP.NET, RSS, XHTML, Bebo, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, LinkedIn… phew!)
So while you’re making that list for Santa (27inch iMac please Santa… please), what makes your Top 10 of the last 10 years?
